Sonet

by Marten Clibbens

Marten Clibbens lives in Buffalo. This book is a collection of sonnets.
One
for nDc

Which, for love's book, wreathed
   is a romance of the vanished;     --Lyn Hejinian
      recreant, blessed without secret,
not an eye but veil the foreign
   client in its glass detained
      for reading, when, to write?
An intermittent witness to concealing
   with revealing exchanged: as if
      the fled wish of third person
in sleep and watching both resigned
   to a dappled trail of leaves
      not there, here, nor where
but his or her remains to seem
   for whose book, then, to keen?

Buffalo
Autumn Equinox
1994